so how do I put this... first of all, this is a personal post from Max, not an "official" team statement. But I felt it was time to address the elephant in the room and I'm sure the team will support it.

Where the hell is Proving Grounds?! Well, it is done. It has been done for weeks and we want to push it out to you. However, we had a plan that didn't quite work out, and the longer we waited to get that plan rolling, the worse the situation became, because you, the fans who have waited patiently, were left out in the cold. I want to personally apologize for that and for our lack of communication. Since I've been the one who posted most of the Facebook updates and other PR, I think it's up to me to get things straight with you.

To recap, our idea was to make Proving Grounds, release it free of charge to you and launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund the development of the next version of Sol Contingency - the FULL game, single-player story included, made with Unreal Engine 4. The guys have been hard at work making a prototype of sorts in UE4 so we could show you that we have already started development on that full game. We didn't just want to give you Proving Grounds (made with older tech) and say "trust us, we can make this again in UE4". We wanted to go further and show you actual gameplay in UE4 to underline our capabilities as developers. Given it took us years to make Proving Grounds and we are not professionals, we felt is was mandatory to wipe any shadow of doubt from our potential Kickstarter backers. We would release Proving Grounds when we had that prototype ready, and start the campaign along with it.

Unfortunately, the progress on this prototype was slower than expected, and it took the guys so long to make something that would be worth showing in a Kickstarter campaign that all the hype around Sol Contingency wound down to a standstill. You began asking questions and some of you even hinted that Sol-C might be dead. But the reality is that three team members worked their asses off to give you something to whet your appetite, beyond Proving Grounds. What we learned from this, though, is that three guys is apparently not enough for full-scale UE4 development in a timely fashion. If it takes us this long to prototype our game in the engine, we clearly can't ask for money and guarantee delivery of a full game in reasonable time - not unless we have help from more hands as well as more experience. This is why we are changing course now.

We have been frustrated by the slow progress for a long time and finally got together to make a decision about the future of our game. I don't want to jump ahead and announce details (since we have yet to work these out), but it's clear you deserve to play Proving Grounds as soon as possible and we don't want to hold it back any longer. We will therefore make a few changes to our funding plan (as well as the Proving Grounds release build) and go a different route from Kickstarter, one that ties directly into Proving Grounds and is based on how well it will be received. We now want to actually keep developing Proving Grounds post-release and give it new content, expanding the gameplay we currently have, and give you guys more to play while we collect any support you are willing to give (think donations). We will then restructure our development plan for the full game (still to be made with UE4) and get it right at that time.

In short: while I can't give you a date for Proving Grounds, I can promise you this game is done and waiting to be released, but we want to do it right and regain the huge favors and trust you guys have put in us. I hope you will enjoy playing Proving Grounds as much as we enjoyed making it, and I also hope you will stay with us for the long run.

Thank you for the update, appreciated! That redirect really unsettled me, kinda low to exploit the reputation of the (non-registered) brand you guys built up for generating additional traffic on a competing product. Anyhow, I'm glad you people are still actively working on this, with all the traffic on the forum stirred by the closed beta I was feeling that maybe I missed something when it suddenly became so silent.

It's good to hear what you're up to Max. I for one have not lost faith or patience. I've been popping into the forum every day looking for the next update, confident that it would appear. I had a blast playing with Luke Schneider and the SolC team during Overload's livestream and I'm very glad that he had such a positive reaction to the game (despite his controller troubles).

Here's one fan looking forward to the Proving Grounds' public release and the next official updates on the game. Keep up the good work

Still important to include the dash "-" in sol-contingency.com to be sure you're reaching the official domain, but Mr. Vukovich was really cool and promptly fixed the redirect.

Thanks for the email. Actually, I wasn't even aware it was doing that. I think I changed it one night when I was super drunk after coming back from a hockey game. The update date in the logs match that night. I found a few other things I did (email and such) from that evening as well, lol. Whoops.
...
It's been changed back and is redirecting to sol-contingency.com. It might take a few minutes to propagate.
...
Sorry about the mix up!

OK, I wish you the best and hope you can develop a great game, be it sooner of later.

However, IMO there's no need to move the game to Unreal 4 as if it is the only way to go.
Why don't you stick to Unreal 3 and let everyone be happy with it?

I think that would be better for you as a developer team, and also better for us, as we can enjoy the game as it was originally intended without getting it delayed indifenitely, and you won't have to go through the hassle to porting the game to another engine.
Just my 5 cents.